


Home

by thekatriarch



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adoptee Feelings, Depressing, Feelings, Gen, I have abandonment issues, Loneliness, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 11:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekatriarch/pseuds/thekatriarch
Summary: "But who wants to be with a man you have to beg not to leave you?"Set during the Force Awakens/Last Jedi period, Leia reflects on her life and the many ways the men in it have disappointed her.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I'm sad and angry about what the powers that be decided to put Leia through to set up the sequel trilogy. Like has the girl not suffered enough?? Unbelievable.
> 
> The timeline is a little off from canon because I'd already written most of this when I decided to look up when Ben Solo was born.

She didn’t cry when Han left. What was the point? Her son was gone, her brother was gone, why shouldn’t her husband go, too? Sometimes she wonders if he would have stayed if she _ had _ cried, if she had begged him not to go. But who wants to be with a man you have to beg not to leave you? So she just watched him leave, and when he was gone, she realized that a part of her had been holding her breath, waiting for this to happen, for years. She had tried so hard not to fall in love with him at all, because he was the kind of man who always had one foot out the door. But he proved her wrong. He stayed. Until he didn’t.

She thought that she would feel something when she saw him again, but when he appears, finally, after so long away, all she feels is tired.

He looks tired, too, but like a magician he has conjured his old ship back into existence, the ship they thought was long gone, that they never thought they’d see again. 

“When did you get this back?” she asks him.

“Just now. The kids found her on Jakku. She’s in pretty bad shape but she runs.”

“When was she ever in _ good _ shape?” she asks, dry, and he chuckles, a little.

She boards the ship, to say hello, or goodbye, or both. She runs her hands across the bulkheads and it feels like she's come home. This is where they had fallen in love. Where he had worked his way past the walls she’d built around her heart and where he’d let her see past his own defenses for the first time. They had built so much together; not just a marriage, not just a life together, but a new world, a better one. And now their marriage has fallen apart and their new world is collapsing. And she’s fighting a war again; a war she’d thought she’d already won. That she thought they’d won together.

She’d been afraid to tell him, at first, when she found out that she was pregnant. They had talked about it; they had agreed that they wanted children, but she was still afraid to tell him that it was really happening. Maybe because she was a little afraid of motherhood; of what it would mean to love someone as much as a parent loves a child. Once she told him, it would be real. And maybe he would be scared, too, once it wasn’t hypothetical anymore. She had thought she wanted a child, and now she was having second thoughts. What if he did the same?

When she did tell him, though, he was happy, and she was so relieved she started to cry. She blamed it on hormones and he kissed her tears away and they made love, slowly, and afterwards they lay in each other’s arms and talked about the future. He said he hoped it was a girl and she asked why, and he said he didn’t know, and that he guessed it didn't matter either way. In her memory this is all golden hued and magical, although it probably wasn’t really like that. He put his hands over her belly and insisted he could feel the baby move and she laughed at him and told him it was much too early to feel anything.

They had been so _ young _ back then, so young and happy and deliriously in love.

While she was pregnant, she went to Naboo, because she couldn’t stop thinking about her birth mother, and wondering if she had felt the same way when _ she _ was pregnant. Had she had doubts? Had she been scared? Anyone who might know the answers to these questions was long dead. Padmé Amidala had left no record behind of her pregnancy or her marriage; she had kept it all secret for as long as possible, and after her death, the few people who had known had kept the secret for her. 

She must have had doubts, though. She must have been able to see what kind of man her husband was becoming. Selfish, arrogant, obsessed with power. Who would want to have children with a man like that? Who could love a man like that?

There were no answers for her on Naboo, but it was a peaceful place to rest, full of gardens and waterfalls and sun drenched meadows. And even if she couldn’t get answers to the questions she most wanted to ask, she felt closer to her birth mother here, which was comforting. Sometimes she wondered if this was disloyal to her own mother, but she thought Breha Organa would understand.

Padmé Amidala had been the queen of this place once, before the reign of the Emperor, and she was still remembered with respect and affection. At the age of fourteen, she had shepherded her planet through a war and emerged victorious. She had served two terms as queen and then joined the Galactic Senate. She was remembered for her intelligence, for her strength, for her bravery. The fact that she had often opposed the Emperor, who had served as senator from Naboo when she was elected queen and then become Chancellor during her first term, was quietly and politely ignored during his reign, but now it was only another reason that her memory was beloved.

She had died young, not yet thirty, after giving birth to her twins, who almost no one knew about, including their father, who thought they had died, too.

When she was on Naboo, sometimes she imagined staying there, raising her child there. It reminded her of Alderaan; of home. But her real home by then was space. The place where she felt the most at home was on Han's ship — on _ their _ ship.

This ship.

"It's good to see her again," she says.

"Just her?" He looks at her. "Not me?" He sounds like he is trying to summon up his old bravado, the scoundrel who had driven her crazy in more than one way.

"I don't know _ what _ it is to see you," she replies, honestly. She still loves him, will love him until the day she dies, but what had been there between them has been irreparably broken.

"I'm sorry," he says, unprompted. "I shouldn't have—"

She holds her hand up. "What use is it apologizing, Han? It doesn't matter now."

"Doesn't it? I never stopped loving you, you know." He sounds so sad, and so soft that for a moment she is almost tempted. Tempted to kiss him, to forgive him, or at least to take him to bed one last time. Instead she shakes her head.

"I know,” she says, so gently, and his eyes find hers and for a moment he looks hopeful, so hopeful it breaks her heart, and then she goes on. "But so what? What good is your love, if it didn't stop you from leaving?"

He doesn’t have an answer. She doesn’t expect him to.

If Luke had stayed. If Han had stayed. Things might have been different. But they didn’t. A long time ago, the night Luke told her that he was her brother, he’d said she was strong. Being the strong one was exhausting. If she was strong, did that mean he was weak? Did he give himself permission to be weak, because there was always Leia to be strong? He’d run away from his mistake. Then Han had run. Then it was just her, being strong, alone.

When Han dies, she feels it like a little flame being extinguished, even though they are so very far apart. He is in the world, and then suddenly, he isn’t. It’s not the first time she has felt someone she loves disappear. She had known it was going to happen. He had probably known, too. He was going to bring their son home or he was going to die trying, and they both knew that their son was never coming home. She’d watched him board the Falcon that last time and she’d known that she would never see him again.

Knowing it was going to happen and feeling it happen are two different things. But still she doesn’t cry.

The dead man comes to visit her while she’s alone, avoiding going to sleep because she’s tired of having nightmares. She knows who he is; recognizes him, even though she’s never seen his face before. He looks a little like her brother. Not a lot.

“I’m trying,” the dead man says. “To save him.” She knows who he means.

“Like Luke ‘saved’ you?” she asks. “And what good did that do anyone? Did it bring back any of the people you killed?” Her words aren’t heated, aren’t angry. She’s too tired to be angry. She looks at the dead man and waits for a reply. He doesn’t have one.

“It didn’t even save any other lives, because you were going to die anyway,” she says.

“It saved his,” the dead man says.

She laughs, or makes a sound that resembles laughter, except there’s no joy or mirth in it. “Yes, you saved him. But he wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for you. He wouldn’t have needed you to save him if you hadn’t brought him there.”

He can’t argue with her, although she knows that he would like to.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with him if we could ‘save’ him,” she says, more to herself than to him. “He’s killed so many people. More than you, maybe. You must be very proud. He idolizes you, you know? What the hell did I do wrong?”

He tells her that it isn’t her fault, and that his mother was a good woman, too. She’s not interested.

“Why are you _ here_?” she asks. “What do you expect me to say to you? If you’re looking for forgiveness, you’ll have to look somewhere else. Go talk to Luke, if you can find him.” And she gives him a hard look. “_Do _ you know where he is?”

The dead man shakes his head. “If I did, I would tell you.”

“For all the good that would do,” she says. She is spending all this effort trying to find her brother, who doesn’t want to be found. Who doesn’t want to see her. If he had ever loved her, his love wasn’t worth much, no more than Han’s had been. And now she’s dispatched this girl, this girl that Han had picked up somewhere, the girl who’d found the Falcon and brought her back to life, to go find Luke. And what if he refuses to come?

Or what if he’s dead?

She wishes that her real father would come and talk to her, instead of this imposter. But her real father hadn’t had those sorts of powers, the ones that let you come back to see the living after you were dead. And what could she say to him even if he had? How could he not be disappointed in her?

“I’ll keep trying,” says the dead man, and then he is gone.

At least someone is trying. At least someone believes that her son is worth trying to save.

When Amilyn sacrifices herself, Leia tries to take her place. She doesn’t think she can survive another loss; the one person who hadn’t abandoned her, her best friend since she was sixteen years old. But Amilyn has always had a close relationship with death, a fascination with it. This is what she’s been preparing for. But what she says is, “they need you.”

She is tired of being needed, instead of being loved.

Maybe she shouldn’t have kept their lineage a secret from her son. She had been so hurt and angry when she found out her parents had kept that secret from her; of course he would be angry, too. She had always meant to tell him someday, but she hated the fact of it so much she preferred not to think about it, not to acknowledge it at all. And how could she have guessed what that anger would do to him? None of it made sense; how had her sweet, serious little boy become such a monster?

What good would it do now, if he was brought back into the light, if he came home? He’s a war criminal. Nothing can undo what he has done. And that means nothing can undo what _ she _ has done; because she brought him into the world and he had been her responsibility.

Han told her that she would like the girl; the girl who found the Falcon. That she was “tough.” When he told her this, the girl was with their son, who had abducted her. What was he doing with her? Leia could imagine. Leia had been that girl.

Towards the end of her pregnancy, when she was swollen and achy, she started feeling an occasional little flicker in the back of her mind that she couldn’t quite pin down. Like feelings, but far away and muted. She thought at first that she was imagining it. They were strongest when the baby was moving, and if she sang the little Alderaanian lullaby her mother used to sing to her, she felt the flicker become soft and warm as the baby settled down. That was when she began to love the little creature inside her, safe and protected and growing. 

She still loves him, after everything he’s done. She knows that if she tried, she could still feel his mind. She had tried, in the early days. Had reached out to him. _ Ben, Ben. I love you. Come home. _But he is stronger than her, has more training than her, and when she tried to touch him, he would think the most terrifying thoughts, just to drive her away.

After Amilyn dies; after almost _ everyone _ dies, Poe Dameron comes to her, shamefaced, to apologize. She’s getting very tired of men apologizing to her. Poe is young, and she remembers what it was like to be young and think you know better than the people in charge. General Dodonna in particular had given her hell for it on more than one occasion. But she had been much younger than Poe is now, and none of her mistakes had a death toll this high. 

Unless you counted Ben as a mistake.

She likes Poe; she always has. His parents had both been members of the Alliance in the old days, and she had fought side by side with his father on the forest moon during the battle of Endor. He’s her best pilot, devoted to the cause, and one of the few people left in the galaxy who can still make her laugh. She’s come to rely on him, which is why she’s so disappointed in him now. She’d already talked to him about following orders; given him a temporary demotion to let the lesson sink in, and clearly it hadn’t.

A year or so ago, Poe had tried to sleep with her. They had been alone, late at night, working, and she had said that she would take care of something, and then he had put his hand over hers and asked “and who will take care of _ you_, General?” which she had to admit was not the worst line she’d ever heard. He’s a sweet kid, and handsome, and if she were twenty or even ten years younger, she might have gone for it, but she’s old enough to be his mother and she’s his commanding officer besides. And anyway she was, and is, still in love with her husband. She tried an affair once or twice after Han left, but even if the sex itself was good, it always left her unsatisfied. She doesn't want sex for the sake of sex. She wants everything, and she wants it with Han.

So she told him, kindly, that it was bad form to proposition one’s commanding officer, and he was wise enough to let the matter drop, although not without indicating that it was an open offer that didn’t expire. 

Not that it matters, but she is pretty sure the offer _ has _ expired; she has seen the fragile beginnings of something tender growing between Poe and the First Order defector he had helped bring into their fold, although she doubts either man would admit to it yet. It’s too early, too uncertain. They may not even know it themselves yet. That’s how it had been for her, when she fell in love. None of this is any of her business, not even close, but maybe she’s still a little bit of a romantic in her heart. She hopes they don’t wait too long.

She and Han had taken a long time to get to the point. They spent three years skirting around and denying their attraction to each other, or at least she did. He was too old; he was too immature; he was too pushy, too attractive, too obnoxious, too _ much. _ When she finally fell, she fell hard. And even then, she wouldn’t let it go too far, because he was on his way out; he was always on his way out. She didn’t want to give her heart away to someone who was always on his way out.

But they fell in love anyway. Her memory casts everything soft and fuzzy now; even all their arguments during the years that they were denying their feelings for each other are hazy and beautiful now. She’s so tired, and she misses him, and she hates that she misses him.

She is still avoiding sleep. For a while, during the early days of the New Republic, during the early days of her relationship with Han, she had slept well; the nightmares she had dealt with since she was nineteen had abated somewhat. But then Ben had disappeared, and reappeared with a new name and a new mission, and her nightmares came back. So she avoids sleep, when she can.

So she sitting up, avoiding sleep, when she receives her second ghostly visitor. He appears behind her, so she doesn’t see him, but she knows that he’s there.

“If I hear the words ‘I’m sorry’ come out of your mouth,” she says, without looking at him, “I’ll find a way to bring you back to life just so I can kill you again.” She’s joking, mostly.

“You’ve been hearing a lot of inadequate and very late apologies, I take it?” asks Luke, and now she turns to look at him.

“It’s an epidemic,” she replies. 

“Well, technically you wouldn’t hear it from my mouth,” he says. “Since I don’t really have one anymore.”

She can’t help but laugh a little, but it’s a sad laugh. She used to laugh when she was happy.

“You must hate me,” says Luke, and she shrugs.

“I almost wish I did. Hating you would be a lot easier, but I love you. I’ve missed you. If you hadn’t run away…” She doesn’t finish her sentence. There’s no point. He _ did _ run away.

“I didn’t know how bad it would get,” he says. “I thought… what happened was my fault. If I wasn’t around, I thought…”

“That things would get better,” she finishes for him, and he nods.

“Pretty stupid, huh?” He is rueful.

It _ is _ stupid; he thought the problem would solve itself, or that Leia would solve it for him. Or maybe stupid isn't the word. Maybe the word is cowardly. But she doesn’t tell him that. Instead she asks a question. “What have you been doing all this time? Doing penance, or something?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Just sitting around stewing in my own self-loathing.”

“Not a very productive use of your time,” she says, dry.

“No,” he agrees. “It was a stupid waste of time. You sent the right person,” he says. “Rey. I like her.”

“Han liked her, too,” she says, remembering what he had said about her: that she was tough.

“Don’t you?” asks Luke.

“I feel sorry for her,” says Leia. “She’s strong. It’s hell to be strong, because it gives everyone else permission to be weak. And then when you need them… they’re gone.” 

“Like me.”

“Like you,” she agrees, and then: “Your father came to see me.” Always _ his _ father; she never calls him hers.

“He — Anakin came to see_ you?” _He’s surprised to hear it. “Why would he do that?”

She shrugs. “He says he wants to ‘save’ Ben. Save him for _ what? _ A prison cell? People don’t care about your Light Side Dark Side Jedi bullshit. You can’t murder billions of people and then say you’re really sorry and you’ll never do it again and have it just _ go away. _ If he comes back, he comes back to be tried. And probably executed.” 

Her voice is emotionless as she speaks. She has spent many thousands of hours trying to think of some alternative, some way that her son could be safe, could be forgiven. A way he could come home. She’s become numb to it. “They’d have to, you know. You couldn’t keep him in a cell; he’d just get someone to let him out.” 

She holds out her empty hands. The truth is, she doesn’t believe her son will ever see a prison cell, much less a trial. Either he’ll finish wiping out her forces, or her forces will kill him. Those are the two options. She can’t live with either one, but that’s what they are. Now there’s a third one: that he will somehow be convinced to come to the “Light Side” and surrender himself, and be tried, and be executed. Another scenario she can’t live with.

Her little boy. He was so small when he was born, with his little red face scrunched up and howling and his tiny fists waving furiously. She was stunned to actually see his face, his hands; that he was real, that he existed at all. She couldn’t look away for what felt like a long time, and then she had looked up at Han in astonishment. “It’s our _ baby,_” she said. She’d never been so tired in her life, and yet somehow sleep seemed out of the question. 

His uncles met him a little while later. Luke was smiling when he first held the baby; she remembers that because it had made her think how long it had been since she’d seen him smile like that. He used to smile so easily, when they had first met. And Chewie, when his turn came, purred and trilled in a way she’d never heard him do before, which was Shryiiwook baby talk, according to Han.

“There’s too much Vader in him.” That’s what Han had said right before he left for the last time; when he left to rescue the girl; when he left to destroy the weapon; when he left to die. It was the same as saying that it was all her fault; that evil was encoded in her DNA, that there had never been a chance of any child of hers being anything other than what their son had grown up to be. Had he really believed that? But what about her? What about Luke? If Anakin Skywalker’s genes were so corrupt, why weren’t she and Luke just as bad?

No. She doesn’t believe in destiny. She never has. What Ben inherited from Vader was power, but power itself is neutral. What matters is how it’s used. Leia had power, too, and she had never been tempted to use it to harm anyone. Maybe it was different because she hadn’t known she had it; had not known it could be wielded as a weapon. Luke was the same way. They’d been raised in isolation, unaware of the secret strength that ran through their bodies, and what it could mean.

They had argued over what to do about Ben’s power. Luke had wanted to train him as a Jedi, and Leia thought it was a good idea. He was a stormy child, prone to mood swings and fits of temper, and she thought that the Jedi training might help him learn to control his strong emotions.

Han had objected. “Look what happened to Luke,” he pointed out. “Do you want him to end up like that?”

He had a point. When Luke had started studying the ways of the Jedi, he had become distant and strange. When he looked at you, it felt as if he were really looking at something else, something very far away. She herself had declined to seriously study Jedi teachings, although Luke had wanted her to. She had no interest in that path.

Ben had wanted to do it, though, so in the end, Han had relented, agreeing that it should be his decision, and they had sent him off to Luke’s budding Jedi school.

What had happened there? What had gone wrong? She doesn’t know. All she knows is that everyone had died, except for her son, who was the killer, and her brother, who blamed himself and disappeared.

She could ask him, now, this shimmering being that used to be Luke, but she isn’t sure she wants to know. Would the answer change anything? Would the knowledge ease her sleep, or make her pain any less? She looks at him, wordless, wondering if a ghost can hug a living person. She is touch starved, love starved. Lonely.

“It’s worth trying, though, isn’t it?” says Luke. “To bring him back? I should have tried before.”

Of course she wants to believe that there is something worth saving still left in her child. She would die to save him, if dying would help. 

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Luke,” she says, softly. “Maybe we can save his soul, but we can’t save his life. It’s too late.”

It’s too late. Too late for Ben, and too late for her, probably. She’s so tired. She can’t explain how much it takes, to wake up every day and make plans and give orders, all in the hope, ultimately, of killing her son. She never says that part out loud; she works very hard to keep herself even from thinking it, but she knows how this has to end. He’ll never stop. She has seen that hunger for power before, has felt it. That hunger is never satisfied. He won’t stop unless he’s dead, which means someone will have to kill him.

They had been a single being, once, not so long ago. She had formed his body out of her body and now he is in the world, a little piece of her that she cannot make herself regret. She loves him. She wants to see him, even though she knows that he will kill her if they are ever in the same room again. He was close, so close, on Crait; if she had gone outside, she could have walked through the battle, right to him, she could have seen him one last time before he killed her.

She didn’t, because it would have thrown away Amilyn’s sacrifice. When someone dies for you, whether you asked them to or not, your life becomes theirs, a little bit. But her life has never belonged only to her.

When she was young, she had believed in something. She’d believed in hope, and lived in hope, and through every loss she suffered, and they were many and great, she persisted, because she believed that there was something worth fighting for on the other side of that pain. What does she believe in now? She doesn’t know how this story ends, but she knows she won’t be part of it much longer. She hopes that the young people she hands it over to will find a way to win, to build a lasting peace.

She hopes that Poe and his defected stormtrooper won’t wait too long to figure out that they love each other, and she hopes that they make each other happy for as long as that love lasts. She hopes that the girl, Rey, won't have to be strong forever. She hopes that Ben can be saved, whatever that means. And she hopes that, wherever she is going next, the people she loves are waiting for her there. When she closes her eyes, she can almost see them, beckoning her to join them on the other side. Come home, they say. Come home.

Not yet, she tells them. I still have work to do.


End file.
